<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Shades of Grey by Maerchenlaenderin</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26423089">Shades of Grey</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maerchenlaenderin/pseuds/Maerchenlaenderin'>Maerchenlaenderin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Azkaban, Death Eaters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:53:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26423089</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maerchenlaenderin/pseuds/Maerchenlaenderin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He lay on the stone floor, predominantly coloured Davy’s grey, a very dark shade of the colour, quite close to black. </p><p>His stuttering breaths disturbed the dust in colour variants of stone grey, medium grey, and dark taupe. Maybe even a little bit of slate grey. </p><p>That was new.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shades of Grey</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Sooo... I was feeling bored and lonely, so... well... this happened. </p><p>I am thinking about making this into a longer fanfiction, but since I'm not sure where I want to go with this... I'll put it at a solid maybe. </p><p>Anyway, have fun.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shadows surrounded him, his world a canvas of shades of grey. </p><p>Swirling shades… Swirling shades of shadow and grey…</p><p> </p><p>He lay on the stone floor, predominantly coloured Davy’s grey, a very dark shade of the colour, quite close to black. </p><p>His stuttering breaths disturbed the dust in colour variants of stone grey, medium grey, and dark taupe. Maybe even a little bit of slate grey. </p><p>That was new. </p><p> </p><p>A cold draft slithered under his rags, coloured in charcoal and Marengo. They were fairly new, but even the three years he had worn them had taken their toll on the former black cloth.</p><p>Three years… He only knew because of the fluctuation in temperature. Summer… summer was nice. It was warm enough that the wards on the walls that kept them alive even in the most dire of circumstances were not needed. </p><p>But winter…</p><p>Winter always promised pain. Lances of ice-cold agony that took over his limbs even when his body had stopped feeling the cold. </p><p>The last winter had been harsh. Harsh enough for his eyeballs to freeze, but the wards had gripped the hull he called home and thawed them again, without regard towards his screams of excruciation. </p><p> </p><p>No!<br/>No, no, no.<br/>Not now, when he had a reprieve. </p><p> </p><p>Grey. His world was grey. Shades of grey that enveloped his whole world. </p><p> </p><p>The walls were shades of dim grey, interspersed with Xanadu, where a slight smattering of algae had taken up residence.<br/>His bedding, a slip of a blanket not worthy it’s name was cloudly coloured in Spanish grey, gunmetal and ash… </p><p> </p><p>He remembered times when he had discussed the colour palette with his teacher, a distinguished artist who had painted the portraits of many a wizard… </p><p>Had he ever known the expanse of shades the colour grey offered…?<br/>Had he…?</p><p>Had they ever spoken about the comfort it could bring or the despair it encouraged?</p><p> </p><p>Swirling shades of shadow and grey, that was his world. Had been his world for longer than he could remember… </p><p>How many winters had he spent in this hole? This definition of leeched vibrancy that had turned even his own skin into a shade closer to Cinereous grey than human flesh?</p><p> </p><p>No!<br/>No, no, no. </p><p> </p><p>Twohundredseventythree. <br/>Two hundred and seventy-three. </p><p>That was the amount of stones of a dim grey colour the walls around him consisted of. Yesterday there had been fourteen with a smattering of Xanadu. </p><p>Twohundredeightyseven.<br/>Two hundred and eighty-seven.<br/>That was the amount of stones in total, not counting the ceiling or the floor. </p><p>One… two… three… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… ten… </p><p> </p><p>A scream broke through the silence the thick stone walls enforced. <br/>His reprieve would be over soon.</p><p> </p><p>Eleven… twelve… thirteen… fourteen… fifteen… </p><p>There was now one more stone that harboured some algae. One more stone in the corner of the Xanadu.</p><p>He needed to count the others again, to make sure.</p><p>One… two… three… four…</p><p> </p><p>A different kind of cold gripped his heart, turned his breath into whispy clouds. Once he would have called them white, but in this world his breath had turned into puffs of platinum grey.</p><p> </p><p>Black spots appeared in his peripheral vision.<br/>Screams echoed in his ear, near deafening in their volume and despair. </p><p> </p><p>It took him a while to realize that not all of those screams stemmed from his memory or from outside of his cell. His throat, painfully raw, produced droplets of blood to fall to the floor. </p><p> </p><p>Blood…<br/>Once he had longed to see it in this cage, a welcome distraction from the grey, a splotch of colour in his world.</p><p>But that had been before he had watched it fall and turn into this dark, near blackish sludge in front of his eyes. </p><p>Even his blood. His blood that he had once been so proud of, ruby red, a crimson unrivalled by any colour he had managed to mix on canvas… pure and brimming with magic… had turned dark and sluggish and dirtied by the grey veil that had fallen on all and everything bright in his life. </p><p> </p><p>The irony was not lost on him.</p><p> </p><p>His body heaved, seized on the floor, his breath hitched and his voice screeched…</p><p> </p><p>Long minutes passed before he realized he was laughing.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>